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Continuity of Government
...I've had that same feeling about Abu Ghraib since I first heard that the coalition had reopened it as a prison last summer. Anyone who knows anything about the history of Saddam's regime can't help but wonder what that particular decision was intended to symbolize. I mean, they didn't even change the name. Saddam International Airport became Baghdad International, Saddam City metamorphosed into Sadr City. But Abu Ghraib Prison remained Abu Ghraib Prison.

Did anyone stop to think what kind of message that sent to the Iraqis about the nature of their "liberation"?

It's as if the allies had captured Buchenwald or Dachau, slapped new coats of paint on them, then turned around and reopened them as occupation prison camps -- not just for Nazis, but for ordinary people grabbed off the street or pulled out of their beds in the middle of the night, often on no more evidence than what the Gestapo would have required. ...